


Love and Other Ridiculous Disasters

by Flowerparrish



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky has trouble reconciling those two things, Clint Barton is a Disaster, Deaf Clint Barton, Fluff, M/M, but he's also hot af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 15:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16287230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: For the prompt: “Don’t you ever do that again! You scared the shit out of me!”OR“Show off,” Bucky said as they moved past Clint, Steve a few steps ahead. Clint didn’t glance back at Bucky, but his lips curved up in a smile, and Bucky didn’t quite feel like he’d gotten the last word.





	Love and Other Ridiculous Disasters

The first time Bucky Barnes met Clint Barton was when Steve was showing him the shooting range at the Avengers compound. Clint must have heard them entering the range—Bucky could be silent when he walked, tended to be silent more often than not out of habit rather than true intent—but Steve took every step with a purposeful intent. He wasn’t loud, necessarily, but his presence was, intentionally or not, and there was no way Clint didn’t feel Steve’s entrance change the atmosphere in the room when they walked in.

 

Clint must have noticed their entrance, but he didn’t move or tense, his body giving no signals that he knew they were there. He had a shot lined up with his bow, held at full draw for just a second before he released it, and it sliced neatly through another arrow that was already dead center on the target, taking its place as the two halves of the other arrow fell to the ground.

 

Bucky whistled, startling himself with the reaction. But the show of competence was undeniably attractive, so Bucky decided he was allowed to appreciate it.

 

Clint turned, body posture open and easy, proving that Bucky was correct and he _had_ known that they were there. “See something you like?” he asked with a wink.

 

Bucky snorted and rolled his eyes.

 

Steve glanced back and forth between them for a moment before smiling at Clint. “I’m just showing Bucky the range,” he told the other Avenger.

 

Clint nodded. “Let me know if I get in your way,” he said, winking at Bucky one more time before he turned back to shooting.

 

Specifically, shooting three arrows at the same time and hitting three targets dead center.

 

“Show off,” Bucky said as they moved past Clint, Steve a few steps ahead. Clint didn’t glance back at Bucky, but his lips curved up in a smile, and Bucky didn’t quite feel like he’d gotten the last word.

 

-

 

Bucky didn’t see much of Clint for the next few weeks, because he spent most of those weeks holed up in his room avoiding everyone that wasn’t Steve and trying not to wonder why he was here, free, instead of locked up in a cell somewhere. His thoughts tended to go in that particular direction a lot when he allowed them to drift, so instead he spent a lot of time lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, pointedly _not_ thinking about anything at all.

 

So he hadn’t spared much thought for Clint or any of the other Avengers, which meant he wasn’t prepared to run into Clint, standing in the kitchen at 2 am, wearing purple boxers and red socks, drinking coffee straight out of the pot.

 

It was such a stark contrast to Clint, poised and confident, on the range that Bucky experienced some cognitive dissonance trying to understand how those two images could be the same person.

 

Clint shifted his posture slightly, leaning against the fridge, and must have noticed Bucky out of the corner of his eye, because he yelped, dropped the coffee pot, and swung around to face Bucky head on. After a moment, his brain seemed to catch up with him, noticing that Bucky wasn’t a threat (at least, not an immediate threat, he was _always_ a potential threat). He slumped back against the fridge and looked down at the mess of glass shards and spilled coffee on the floor, expression forlorn. “Aw, coffee, no,” he mumbled before looking back up at Bucky. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, and gestured at his ears.

 

Bucky noticed abruptly that Clint wasn’t wearing his hearing aids, and he felt a little bit like an asshole for sneaking up on and startling a deaf guy. Only a little bit, though, because he _knew_ he’d been walking silently, and he would probably have scared the shit out of anyone, hearing or no. He considered telling Clint this, but he didn’t see the point—he still looked like an asshole either way. So he just nodded. “Do you need help cleaning up?” he asked, speaking clearly so that Clint could read his lips.

 

Maybe he should learn sign language.

 

He startled himself with the thought. He wasn’t made to consider other people, and more importantly, he didn’t trust this living situation to last. What was the point in learning ASL for Clint if he barely got the opportunity to use it?

 

But also, what was it about Clint that seemed to bring out his humanity—first attraction, now compassion. Even Steve couldn’t make Bucky into a real human being these days, but with Clint he kept slipping into it without trying.

 

He wasn’t sure it mattered either way, but it was something to think about.

 

“I got it,” Clint responds, dragging Bucky out of his thoughts—always a good thing, that. He succeeds in fully distracting Bucky when he then makes to step _through_ the glass on the floor.

 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Bucky hears himself asking before he thinks to speak, his arm moving in a sharp gesture to get Clint’s attention.

 

Clint freezes, one foot in the air. “Going to get a broom?” he says, like it’s a question but he’s not sure that it should be.

 

Bucky facepalms. There’s no other word for it. He’s feeling genuine frustration, which is sort of amplified by the fact that he hasn’t felt anything besides echoes of emotions and overwhelming numbness for weeks. “You’re surrounded by glass,” he points out, after pulling his hand away from his face. “I can get the broom.”

 

Clint looks down at the glass before slowly lowering his foot back to where it originally was when the destruction happened. “I guess,” he agrees uncertainly. “It wouldn’t hurt that much,” he mutters when Bucky’s back is turned, but Bucky’s super-hearing picks up on it.

 

He turns to glare at Clint. “You’re an idiot,” he tells him.

 

Clint heaves a sigh. “So I’ve been told,” Clint agrees. He leans back against the fridge once more and waves Bucky away.

 

-

 

The next time Bucky runs into Clint is almost a week later, this time during midday when he’s more prepared for others to be around. In fact, he’s already narrowly avoided Sam, who is in the common room, and he warily passed Wanda in the hall. So far he’s avoided conversation, though, so he considers this mission a success.

 

The mission is to do his laundry while avoiding the others living in the compound to the best of his ability—and his abilities are pretty fucking spectacular.

 

The only reason he needs to do his laundry now, after living here for a few weeks already, is that Steve thinks he’s isolating himself—true—and that it’s detrimental to his health and recovery—Steve’s words, and irrelevant, in Bucky’s opinion. But Steve gets what Steve wants, or at the very least he applies his best efforts to getting what he wants, and right now, what he wants has resulted in Bucky having no clean underwear.

 

“I haven’t done laundry in seventy years,” Bucky pointed out to Steve, hoping to garner sympathy.

 

But no, Steve had laughed instead. “You’ll figure it out,” was all he had bothered to reply.

 

The laundry room, Bucky discovers, is… nice. It has windows that take up half of one wall and contains more machines than all of the people in the compound could possibly need, unless everyone tried to do weeks’ worth of dirty laundry all at the same time.

 

As soon as Bucky pictures that nightmare scenario, he’s immediately relieved that the only other person in the room is Clint, who is currently pulling laundry out of one of the dryers and muttering to himself. He sounds angry, but Bucky can’t quite make out the words. It only takes him a moment to notice the problem once he’s looking, though.

 

All of Clint’s whites—not that there’s many of them, but still—have turned pink. The grays are tinged with pink. Luckily, the purple that makes up the majority of his wardrobe has escaped the pink, as have his jeans and black pairs of sweatpants, but gray sweats, socks, and underwear have all suffered.

 

Clint fishes around in the pile and pulls out one of the red socks that Bucky saw him wearing the last time they ran into each other.

 

“Didn’t anyone tell you not to mix your colors with your whites?” Bucky asks him, a bit exasperated with Clint’s ineptitude but also curious. Plus, now when he inevitably messes up because laundry has become _more_ complicated with the advances in technology, he can comfort himself with the knowledge that he (probably) won’t have dyed his clothes pink.

 

Pink is not a good color for the Winter Soldier.

 

(He thinks Clint could probably pull it off, and then wonders why he thought that and brushes the thought aside. He doesn’t care what Clint wears. Really.)

 

Clint glances over at him and grimaces. “My mom sure never taught me,” he replies, “and it’s not really something that was covered in my years at the carnival.”

 

He says that like it’s something Bucky should know, but Bucky doesn’t. It’s probably something that’s in Clint’s file, but Bucky didn’t bother reading anyone’s files, because he wasn’t interested in getting to know anyone (and, more truthfully, he didn’t want to be able to figure out easy ways to take them down, if the Winter Soldier was ever triggered).

 

This doesn’t seem like the time to ask, though, so Bucky shrugs and moves to do his own laundry.

 

-

 

The third time Bucky runs into Clint, it’s once again the middle of the night, only a few days later.

 

Bucky is silently going through each room, checking security even though he _knows_ it’s solid, because he can’t calm the anxiety spiking through his veins, intensifying with every beat of his heart.

 

He finds Clint in the lounge, lights still off, watching some late-night movie on the television that takes up most of one wall.

 

He checks for Clint’s hearing aids, spots them when there’s a flash of light from the screen, and says, “Hey,” to alert Clint to his presence.

 

Clint doesn’t startle, even though Bucky _knows_ he was moving soundlessly through the compound. He just waves lazily, not looking away from the screen.

 

Bucky watches him for a minute, indecision freezing him in place. He _needs_ to check that the compound is secure; he won’t rest otherwise, probably won’t rest even if he does. But he _wants_ to stay with Clint, watching shitty late-night television, seeing if Clint can work whatever magic it is he has that makes Bucky feel more human than asset, as opposed to how he feels pretty much the rest of the time: like he’s a weapon without a purpose.

 

“This movie’s okay, if you want to watch,” Clint says eventually, still not looking at him. “He kills a guy with a nail gun near the end.”

 

Part of Bucky is sick of violence, but a larger part of Bucky misses analyzing fighting styles and thinks he might enjoy the opportunity to do it again, even if it’s for a B-list, unrealistic movie.

 

“Okay,” Bucky agrees, sitting next to Clint on the couch, carefully leaving a few inches of space between them.

 

After a few minutes of not understanding the plot because he’s lacking context, he gives up on watching until the violence begins, studying Clint in the low light instead. There’s another flash of light from the screen and Bucky notices a dark patch in Clint’s blond hair toward the back of his head. He reaches out, just barely stopping himself from touching.

 

Clint’s eyes finally turn away from the screen to look at him; his posture broadcasts a warning even though he doesn’t say anything, just watches Bucky watching him.

 

“There’s blood in your hair,” Bucky tells him, pulling his hand away. Bucky’s an expert at spotting blood, even dried, even in low light and half hidden in shadows.

 

Clint reaches up and touches the spot, trying to comb his fingers through the strands before they catch and get stuck. He curses under his breath, glancing away, before looking back at Bucky with a shrug. “Nightmares,” he says flatly. His eyes hold the least emotion Bucky has ever seen in them. “Hit my head on the side table when I fell out of bed.”

 

It’s tragic, but Bucky doesn’t care about that. What he cares about is that it’s relatable; he knows that feeling. If he tried to sleep now, nightmares are all that would be waiting for him, too. So he nods and pointedly looks back at the television, leaving Clint to relax and return to watching the movie at his own pace.

 

The nail gun scene is as interesting as promised. There were better ways to go about killing the men in the scene, of course, but Bucky can respect the main character’s resourcefulness.

 

By the end of the movie, Clint’s relaxed and slouched down against the cushions enough that his arm is just barely brushing against Bucky’s metal one. He can only feel the pressure, not the warmth, but it soothes some of the anxiety still sizzling in his blood.

 

Clint is the only one who gets any more sleep that night, his head eventually falling to rest on Bucky’s shoulder, but Bucky gets something from the proximity, too. For the first time since he fell off of the train more than half a century ago, touch is something that makes him feel grounded, calm, and alive.

 

-

 

After that night, they start to hang out more on purpose. Clint invites him to the range, where sometimes Clint forsakes his bow for a sniper rifle and they compete. They cook meals together sometimes, or try to, messing up frequently between Bucky’s inexperience and Clint’s tendencies toward chaos. Bucky figures out at some point that he’s made a friend in this century, but Clint’s awesome and it stops Steve from frowning at him so often, so it’s a win in Bucky’s book.

 

-

 

Bucky’s first mission with the Avengers almost goes off without a hitch. He’s been living at the compound for a year, formed tentative friendships with the other members of the team, and is close to Steve and Clint (in very, very different ways).

 

For most of his first mission fighting doombots in New York City, he’s just mindlessly slaughtering robots. A couple of times, arrows take them out before he can reach them, and he figures Clint’s winding him up by stealing his targets, but it reminds him that Clint is safe up high and watching their backs, so he isn’t very bothered.

 

Everything is fine until the building Clint is on gets swarmed, and he shoots a grappling arrow to a taller building nearby, swinging down the line and crashing through a window.

 

Bucky’s heart stops in his chest for a moment, until Clint’s voice is back on the comms, snarking at everyone, and he can breathe again. He turns and rips the head off of a doombot in an attempt to cleanse the awful feeling he’d had watching Clint swing through the air, certain he was going to crash into the side of a building and break all of his bones.

 

He’s maybe still not thinking clearly by the end of the battle, although it doesn’t get in the way of his fighting—if anything, he’s even more effective killing the robots, now that he’s angry and invested.

 

All of the anger that had mostly worn off by the time the fight ends comes rushing back to him, though, when he sees Clint, covered in small cuts and what are bound to be a few purpling bruises, being patched up by the medics.

 

He storms over to Clint and glowers at him until Clint looks at him, eyebrow raised. “Don’t you ever do that again!” he snaps. “You scared the shit out of me!”

 

Clint blinks at him for a moment before glaring back. “I didn’t do anything that was more dangerous than what the rest of you were doing,” he snaps back. “What, did you want me to stay on the rooftop swarmed by too many doombots to fight?”

 

 _No, I want you safe from the fighting,_ Bucky thinks, but luckily doesn’t say, because that’s… not fair. Clint’s an Avenger, just like the rest of them, and he deserves his place on the team just as much as any of them—more than Bucky does, that’s for sure.

 

He can’t think of anything to say that isn’t shitty or cruel, so he turns and storms off.

 

That would be the end of it, maybe; he could apologize to Clint, say he was tripped up by seeing a friend in danger, and everything would probably go back to normal. The problem is, Bucky can’t stop _thinking_ about it—that moment, Clint’s body arcing through the air, and Bucky’s terror.

 

It’s the same feeling he used to get when he’d catch Steve in fights, back before Steve became borderline indestructible. Clint, compared to the rest of them, is objectively fragile, and it scares the shit out of Bucky. Clint’s a disaster, and he’s injured more often than he’s not, and Bucky can’t imagine trying to adjust to life here without him, if anything were to happen. It’s unacceptable. But it’s also all too possible, that something could happen on a mission, and Clint would be gone.

 

It’s not something Bucky’s ever considered, before now, during any of the mission that he wasn’t present for. He’s heard stories about Clint jumping off of buildings retold at team dinners, but in those moments, it was always an abstract concept, and Clint was safe, near enough for Bucky to reach out and touch.

 

But Bucky also remembers Clint’s competence on the range the first time they met, and how he seemed to be everywhere at once during the battle, watching everyone’s back’s from above, and he knows that his feelings aren’t important here. It’s not his decision.

 

-

 

It takes Bucky two days to work up the nerve to approach Clint, which is fine, because it takes another day and a half before Clint allows Bucky to catch him—another display of his competence, and a reminder of what Bucky has to tell him.

 

“I know you can take care of yourself,” Bucky tells Clint without preamble when he finally catches up to him, slouched on the couch in the living room and watching yet another shitty late-night movie at 2 am.

 

“Obviously you don’t,” Clint grumbles back, but he sounds more petulant than angry. “I get it, I’m the only person on the team without powers, except Natasha, and I’m clearly not Natasha—”

 

“I know you can take care of yourself,” Bucky repeats, cutting Clint off. “I almost popped a boner the first time I saw you shooting on the range,” he continues, and he’s gratified to watch Clint more or less choke on air. “I did pop a boner watching you shooting last week,” he admits, and admires the red that’s coloring Clint’s cheeks.

 

“Did you just say what I think you said?” Clint asks.

 

“Knowing you can take care of yourself doesn’t stop me from worrying about you,” Bucky tells him. “You’re an accident-prone disaster, and I’m probably always going to worry about you getting hurt.”

 

Clint pouts. “That is not as nice as the boner talk,” he protests. “I say we go back to that.”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he knows his expression is distressingly fond. “I like you,” he tells Clint.

 

“We’re friends,” Clint points out.

 

“Yes,” Bucky agrees. “You’re my best friend besides Steve, and unlike Steve, I’d like to suck your dick. That doesn’t change the fact that seeing you in danger is something I’m going to have to get used to.”

 

Clint looks slightly dazed. “This is not how I pictured this conversation going,” he says conversationally. But then he refocuses. “That sounds like a you problem,” he says. “The danger thing, not the dick thing. The dick thing is definitely a problem we could solve together, if you know what I mean.” He waggles his eyebrows exaggeratedly, and it shouldn’t be hot. It isn’t hot.

 

It works on Bucky anyway.

 

“It’s a me problem,” Bucky agrees, although now that Clint’s basically given him permission to suck his dick, he’s a bit distracted from the main points of his realizations. “I’ll work on it. I can’t promise I’ll be okay with it immediately, but I’ll work on it.”

 

Clint studies him for a minute. “Good enough for me,” he decides eventually. Bucky feels his mouth curling into a grin, and Clint matches it. They watch each other for a moment, before Clint rises, padding across the plush carpet until he’s standing a few inches away.

 

“Now,” Clint says, his eyes darkening in the dim light. “How about that _other_ problem you mentioned?”

 

Bucky rolls his eyes, but that doesn’t stop him from dragging Clint out of the living room and toward their bedrooms.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first winterhawk fic, which is astounding, because they're my #1 ship, but I never had any ideas for what to write until bringyourownboyd over on tumblr prompted me this one. Thank you <3 This grew a little bit away from the original prompts you sent, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway!
> 
> Feel free to prompt me anything for winterhawk on tumblr (as flowerparrish) and I'll try to deliver! Thanks for reading.


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